I'm curious how the forum would render the word duty. I was a little surprised to see that there isn't one in Karen's lexicon (sidebar: casualty of an aborted project, or deliberate omission a la "hero?").

My current leading candidate is ijaa'bora. Thoughts?

Context: I practice German longsword fencing and just ordered my first steel blunt. I am considering getting its blade etched. I majored in ancient Greek as an undergrad, so I've settled on a Greek-style inscription/dedication, but there's a word missing: ner gai cuyi [duty]. I could make it up (and I suppose anything we do in this regard is "made up") but this is special enough to warrant a poll to the community. nu copaani jarile kal be ner cyare munikad.

Also, are the [ newmando ] and [ oldmando ] tags actually functional on this board?

Disclaimer: I am really new to learning Mando'a, so I would take any answer of mine with a grain of salt.

I would hazard the guess that the 'Resol'nare' (the 'Six Actions') that form the core tenets of Mando'ade culture would be the closest thing to the word 'duty' that I have seen officially published. The Resol'nare would be the cultural duty of any Mando'ade to learn and uphold.

I like your word, which I translate to mean 'honorable job'.

Might I suggest, 'Haatyc'bora'? It would roughly mean 'true job'. 'Be'solyc'bora', on the other hand, would be 'priority job'.

I could see your idea or these other two ideas being analogous to the meaning of 'duty'.

Would love to hear what you decide.

Part father, part artist, part perpetual student, part gamer, part Japan-o-phile, part contrarian, part instigator, part anthropologist, part blacksmith, part costumer, part food lover, part writer, part adventurer, part eccentric...AN MANDO'AD!

I suppose the question one should ask first is ... what is duty? I think the English word generally simply means "that which one must do," and is agnostic about why one must do it. The why is not inherent in the word (although of course it may be assumed, depending on context).

So perhaps bora is not the right term to be modifying at all. The fact that bora is the stem for borarir suggests to me that there is no real sense of compulsion or necessity about it - one agrees to a bora, but ni borari is closer to ni nari than ni liniba, I think. Ni liniba borarir is not redundant.

So let me go back to ret'lini. Ret expresses possibility, almost like "maybe." -lini clearly comes from linibar, "to need" (as opposed, at least, to copaanir, "to want"). If the colloquial meaning of ret'lini is "just in case," then I think the literal meaning would be something like "if needs must." That is, you do something ret'lini to hedge against the possibility of needing to do something - it's a hedge against compulsion, necessity.

This suggests to me that lini is the place to start - "need," the noun, as opposed to the verb.

In that sense, I suppose duty could be adequately rendered by the existing word lini (as in ret'lini). The sense of "duty" that I am attempting to capture, I think, is this:

Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.

That is, I'm looking for a sense of compulsion that comes from within, from a person's will.

So - and bearing in mind here that while I am interested in a generic Mando word for duty, my immediate need is for a gai, not a miit - what think we of mavlini?

Perhaps what you want is an imperative prefix? Ke'gyce means order, ke is the commanding prefix... ke'bora? Short, euphonic, and I think the meaning is what you might be looking for... or perhaps ke'nar. The action one must take.

More importantly, I like having multiple words to express slightly different shades of the same concept. So long as we are making words up, I like all of these - the important thing being that we understand why we made up the words that we did. I had forgotten about the use of the imperative in a non-verb context.

I might be jumping a liiiiitle late for the discussion, but i think the simpler you make it, the better it is.You have Resol'nare, which means Six Tenets, or as i see it, Six Duties.We could use "nar" just for the sake of simplicity, but it will be confusing with "action".So i suggest "en'nar".Composed of "entye" and "nare".Dont misunderstand me but i think that duty does come from debt. The debt one must pay to society. Its a common concept with small nations forced into unhospitable land and struggling to survive. Which i think was exactly the case with mandos. Along with their strong family and clan orientation.

Just as my personal view, I prefer to think of societies and friendships and the like as collaborative. I suppose it's the difference between "I did it because I have to" and "I did it because we're on the same team," but this is all just philosophy. I'd certainly understand if someone used your word, and perhaps it'd give me some insight into their worldview, as well.

That's a very good point, Vlet. Perhaps we should have different words for different kinds of duty. I'm sure the situation arises where one has to follow orders one may disagree with, in which case, the word for "I did it because I had to" would be more useful -- and expressive -- than "I did it because we're on the same team."

When I was taking my notes for the course I was just in, I was taking them in an eclectic (to say the least) mix of aurebesh, cyrillic, mando'a, and d'ni, with random notes in mando'a, russian, arabic, french, german... to make matters worse, whenever I forgot a word in one language, I'd slip in a replacement, but use the grammar for the first language. It was glorious.